Customer Reviews

Classical and Nonclassical Logics: An Introduction to the Mathematics of Propositions

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been using quite intensively this book as part of a Logic for Philosophy Majors Class I am teaching this semester in Bogotá. The approach in the book is excellent - from the beginning it emphasizes various logics (Classical, Constructive, Fuzzy, Comparative, Relevance among others) with many examples and classical motivations (Aristotle on relevance and comparison of truth, etc.).

I particularly like the treatment of the semantics in the book - the fact it does two-valued, three-valued, integer valued, set-valued and topological-valued semantics for various logics. The treatment of the semantics is clear enough - it may be taught for second-semester students at my University.

I like a bit less the treatment of syntax - my impression is that from chapter 12 on, the book seems to provide a picture of syntax less clear, at least for the class I teach this with. That part of the book is very good for self-study and for examples, but my impression is that the treatment of syntactic aspectics is not at the level of the treatment of semantic aspects (superb in this book).

All in all, my impression is that Schechter's Classical and Nonclassical Logics (...) is excellent either as a textbook (though I prefer it in the semantics "half"), as a self-study book or as a basic clear reference of many different logics.

Warning: the book - as the complete title says - is centered on Propositional Calculus - there is essentially no Predicate Calculus. At first that seemed strange to me, but I now understand a bit better the possible reasons for the author's decision. That does not make per se the book worse or better - there is already a lot of material covered - if the author had tried to include Predicate Calculus as well, the book would have probably doubled in volume and it is not clear that it could accomplish what it does: presenting on equal footing many logics, giving the reader many tools and examples to see the differences and the motivations of the various logics.